Hefei
— — the quiet capital that learned to think in particles.
Not only on a wall.
“Capital of Anhui, on the north shore of Chaohu, one of the five largest freshwater lakes in China. The city Bao Zheng came from in the eleventh century, and the city the University of Science and Technology came to in the late 1960s. Old water, old courthouse, new physics. People walk Swan Lake at dusk.
Hefei, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Hefei is the capital of Anhui Province in eastern China, about 450 km west of Shanghai, with a metro population near 9.4 million. The old town sits on a low plain between the Yangtze and the Huai, anchored on the south by Lake Chao. Its history runs back to the Han dynasty; its modern identity took shape after 1970, when the University of Science and Technology of China relocated here during the Cultural Revolution and never left.
Chaohu, or Lake Chao, covers about 770 square kilometres just south of the city, one of the five largest freshwater lakes in China. Shallow and wide, it floods in summer and shrinks in winter, holding white perch, silver carp, and the river crab the local kitchens braise in autumn around the Mid-Autumn Festival. The shoreline has been restored in stages since the 2010s after decades of algal bloom; a ring road and wetland parks now trace the northern arc.
Most visitors come for one of three things. The Baogong Memorial Temple in Baohe Park, dedicated to the eleventh-century judge Bao Zheng, whose incorrupt rulings made him a folk hero remembered nine centuries later. The Anhui Provincial Museum, which holds bronzes from the Chu kingdom. And USTC's western campus, whose quantum laboratories produced the team behind the 2016 Micius satellite. Spring and autumn carry the mildest weather; summer is humid, winter cold and damp. The Hefei Botanical Garden west of the lake is busy on weekends.